Thursday, January 17, 2013

The L5R 4e Resource Guide: Code of Bushido & The Way of the Crane

THE L5R 4E RESOURCE GUIDE
The set-up of the new 4e L5R more easily allows the use of materials from
earlier editions and eras. That raises the questions: which of these products
should an L5R 4e GM bother picking up? Which of them offer new insights into
the pre-Clan War period (and beyond)? Which of them offer more universally
useful setting material? This series aims to answer those questions. Note
that I leave aside any and all mechanical material and questions for purposes
of these reviews.

CODE OF BUSHIDO
There’s an important point made in the introduction to B1: Code of Bushido:
“Be prepared to ‘fail’ in some of these tests- they aren’t winnable. Rather
they teach the character (and, hopefully, the player) where they stand when
their deepest beliefs are on the line.”

I’m of two minds about that. On the one hand, I do think it is important to
place samurai PCs in positions which conflict with their values. Challenging
those positions and making the players swing back between states creates drama
and tension. It gives the players a chance to play out cool stuff at the table.
And it can take a while to show players how these codes actually operate in
this world. They need to be dealt with- enforced in some manner: socially,
mechanically. Otherwise they have no weight and the game is simply a fantasy
rpg with cooler swords.

On the other hand, I’m always wary of material which suggests the module will
put players in a ‘no win’ situation. I know from experience how well players
deal with that. Too much of that’s a good way to get a group to hate a game or
setting.

I know that some react to all ‘story’ modules as linear and count that as
negative. That’s a sliding scale for me however. I think there are degree of
linearity- with choices within them. The Enemy Within series has great earlier
modules which combine a solid through-line with lots of room for player
exploration and choice. Unfortunately the series finishes with a tightly
plotted and orchestrated adventure. When choices are narrowed to one
consistently or outcomes predetermined regardless of player input, that bugs
me.

I call this "The Wedding Ring" problem. This comes from a particular Skyrim
quest that my wife continually complains about. In it, a husband asks you to go
and rescue his wife from bandits. You go into the bandit’s base and find a dead
woman with a wedding ring. You assume it is the wife. But shortly after you
discover that the wife is alive and now the leader of the bandits. And she
wants you to go back and kill her husband, and if you don’t say yes- BOOM-
fight and then you’re mopping her blood off your armor. So you return to her
husband, and…

…and the obvious choice at this point would be to tell him that his wife was
killed by the bandits. Perhaps you could even use that wedding as a prop? But
no, the game only allows you to tell him that you killed his wife. At which
point he attacks you and then you’re mopping his blood off your armor. Your
only real choice is to walk away from the quest which leaves it incomplete and
in your log book. I’ve played some BioWare games which have had similar traps,
moments where I think “Jeez, the obvious thing to say is X…” but that’s not
even close to being an option.

Code of Bushido is a 48-page module with three linked mini adventures.
It focuses on questions of Bushido and introduces the Mantis a little to the
setting (the most until the Way of the Minor Clans a couple of years later).
The art’s decent throughout the book- I like the focus on utility shots of the
NPCs. Honestly any art in a module ought to serve a purpose: as something the
GM can hand out or to illustrate what a particular scene or location looks like
for GM reference. The cardstock cover has decent maps on the interior. The
floorplans could be more generally useful.

A Matter of Honor: All three of these modules share some NPCs,
and players can easily move from one to another. Running the latter episodes
would be more difficult if you skipped the earlier ones. The set up for this
story has the PC group escorting a caravan to a Shugenja tournament. An
additional element lies in at least two of the PCs being ordered to woo the
hand of a relative of the Emperor. That will work for some games and not
others. There’s room for a diverse party here and the story offers lots of
incidents and events. I would have liked a little more support and detail for
running the Shugenja tournament itself.

But there’s a big problem in this adventure, one which happens early one.
There’s a set of two events which must occur for the rest of the scenario to
play out. I’m more OK when these things happen outside of the players’ range of
control. But this happens on the PCs’ watch. The PCs have to be stupid. It
feels really forced- especially because the group then has to go on rather than
following up on that incident. You end up with three separate incidents which
will likely antagonize the group unless handled very carefully to conceal their
nature.

Testimony, Murder, and Lies: Another murder mystery, but this one
with a Winter Court set up. There’s, of course, more of discussion of that in
the latter Winter Court series. But the material here is useful for running
such an event in game. This mixes free range play with a more linear approach
once the murder occurs. One sticking point may be the introduction of the PCs’
daimyo as a character. The text seems to assume that all of the players share a
daimyo. The earlier story doesn’t assume this and if fact suggests isn’t the
case. GMs will need to read through the text carefully and figure out how
juggle that. Those problems aside, the story has some clever ideas and
far-reaching implications.

Deadly Ground: The shortest of the adventures, and one relying on
playthrough of the previous episodes. There’s a mix of coincidence and misunderstandings
driving the plot here which will likely make this play out as a tragedy. It
does offer some striking character interactions.

Finally, for reasons of the plot, the module ends with a discussion of the
Mantis and the introduction of the Mantis Bushi school. Much of this is better
fleshed out in later supplements.

OVERALL
This module could be set in any era with an Imperial line, meaning pre-Clan
War. If set in a latter period, some of the problems and stakes of the module
won’t work. They would take some serious reworking to function, perhaps
shifting the imperial bride to be a member of a Clan Champion’s family? Still
the ideas here are workable, if the GM is willing to put in the time.

THE WAY OF THE
CRANE
One of the pleasures of rereading these early L5R books comes from seeing how
material originally developed. Later editions, especially third, would
overelaborate these concepts, trying to keep up with the card game’s twists and
turns. Fourth edition L5R’s more setting-agnostic approach reduces that. But
with first edition products, there’s less existing backstory. We see authors
with a freer hand to create concepts who work skillfully threading the pieces
and patterns they can. There’s a real sense of attachment in these first books-
with game material coming out of the earliest campaigns. From the Crab book up
through the Phoenix book (and especially the Scorpion volume) the clans feel
coherent and the authors have a grasp on what they represent.

The Crane in Rokugan exemplify art, civility, culture, beauty, social graces.
They also represent one of the hurdles in roleplaying in the setting. There’s
an axiom in writing, “Show Don’t Tell.” An author who simply says that a
character is a worthy of respect, a master at his craft, or a brilliant
courtier doesn’t do much. That has to actually be shown through actions,
through the reactions of others, through events. The mechanics of an RPG often
allow and push players towards telling: “I have Benten’s Blessing,” “I have
Glory 4,” “I have a 5 in Courtier.” These declarations often feel less
convincing than the parallel declaration “I have a 5 in Kenjutsu” in combat
situations.

Playing a Crane often means playing a graceful and refined creature. Some
players can play that convincingly at the table, but others can’t. The real
problem comes when players approach these characters with assumptions or chips
on their shoulder. I’ve seen players who assume because they’ve chosen the
action and they have a high skill, then the choice must be right by definition.
They expect the GM to play it that way. More often though I’ve seen players
assume that their nature as a “social” character fixes everything. They
shouldn’t have to actually act out those interactions, because they have all of
the appropriate techniques. But they also don’t want to go to the dice because
of their story orientation; it feels like surrendering to them. That’s a
frustrating Catch-22 for GMs. I love the inclusion of Courtiers and social
characters as a viable option in L5R. I also know that if a player opts to
follow that path, I need to talk with them about that ahead of time- to
establish their comfort zone and give them reasonable expectations about how I
might run those details.

Which brings us to the actual book, The Way of the Crane, a slightly
longer volume at 128 pages. Brian Snoddy provides the excellent cover artwork
mixing beauty and dynamism. The interior artwork’s great throughout, with only
one or two bad pieces. When artists tried to echo traditional Japanese art and
images in previous books, they’ve often looked weird and unnatural. Here they
actually work- reflecting the evolving art direction from AEG. The layout's
solid and the organization remains the same: five main chapters and five appendices.
Chapter Three is pretty exclusively character mechanics save for a couple of
interesting sidebars. The section on arts here is hugely useful however.
Chapter Five presents sample characters useful as NPCs.

The opening fiction in the other “Way of…” books dealt with iconic First
Core setting characters (Otaku Kamoko, Mirumoto Hitomi). Here author Ree
Soesbee opts for a shorter and more mythic piece. But old favorite Doji Hoturi
does pop up in the generally excellent Chapter One material- perspectives on
the Crane from other clans. There’s one weird misstep in that section, in her
description of the Unicorn Clan narrator. The text makes it sound as if the
Unicorn have only arrived a little before the First Core setting. It also
suggests that Gaijin regularly trade with the Empire. It doesn’t fit with the
material provided in The Way of the Unicorn or with the later picture of
Rokugan. It’s a small detail, but one which stuck with me.

Chapter Two covers the various families of the Crane. The author chooses to
integrate more of the historical and warfare details under the families
themselves, rather than as an expansive history section before that. The
concepts here are excellent- with some really nice details on philosophies of
the sword and culture. The sidebar concepts- on naming, mons, the Sparrow Clan,
and other topics- offer rich additional details. Chapter Five gives us the
background and details on nine of the major NPCs of the period. The material
here does an excellent job of giving insight into the tensions simmering under
the surface of this Clan. In particular, Doji Kwanan demonstrates the
difficulty posed by the Multiple Schools advantage. That, and an earlier
sidebar on the topic, offer useful advice for GMs facing power players who want
all of the cool stuff.

The appendices begin with seven pages on the lands of the Crane, complemented
by sidebars on what the Crane think of other Clans. Appendix two covers
Mizu-do, the Crane unarmed martial art. I’ve never cared to that as a concept;
I think those techniques belong with the Dragon or the Brotherhood. Later
material would, of course, give every Clan some kind of martial arts form. An
appendix covers some new spells, but does include several new Nemuranai and
fetishes. There’s a CGG chapter and the book wraps up with a great map of the
Kyuden Doji (yay!) and one page with two adventure hooks, one of which isn’t really a
hook (boo).

OVERALL
One of the criticisms I’ve seen leveled at the “Way of…” books has been power
creep as the series progressed. In particular posters point to The Way of
the Crane as a particularly egregious example of this problem. That’s
another advantage to coming back to these books from later editions. You can
simply and completely ignore all of those concerns. Instead a good book ought
to offer new insights, give suggestions on how to present these concepts at the
table, and provide adventure hooks and seeds. In that respect, whatever its
failings as a 1e book, The Way of the Crane does some of that well. It
is a useful purchase for later edition GMs. I would have preferred more
scenario and story ideas and fewer new mechanical options for the Crane.